SAN DIEGO, Calif. — June 1, 2012 – Don’t confuse the Robert Cheruiyot who won the 2010 Boston Marathon with the Robert Cheruiyot, who won the Boston Marathon in 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2008. The first and last names are the same, but that’s one of the few resemblances. The more recent Boston winner is 23, the other is 32. The 2010 winner’s middle name is Kiprono, the other’s is Kipkoech. The younger Cheruiyot will be heading a strong professional field for Sunday’s 15th annual Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego Marathon. The other Cheruiyot will not be competing.

Ryan Hall will be among Half Marathon Runners @ 2012 San Diego Rock N Roll

On top of one of the strongest marathon fields in memory at Rock N Roll San Diego, the Half Marathon will feature two of America’s top runners in their final preparations for the upcoming 2012 Olympics. Both Ryan Hall and Meb Keflezighi will be gunning for a win Sunday as they test their fitness for the games.

Back to the Cheruiyots. “We are not related,” Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot said on Friday for the other Boston winning Cheruiyot.. “I’m not the one who won Boston four times. But now I have done it and I’m very happy to have done it.” Both Cheruiyots live in Kenya, but a great distance apart. The older one lives in Nairobi, the younger in the village of Sarucha.

When Kiprono returned to his little township two years ago after his Boston triumph, he was greeted like a conquering hero. He estimstes that about 20,000 people from villages all around his home base turned out to greet him and threw him a celebatory party. They also presented him with five cows, which he gave to his mother. Should he win in San Diego on Sunday, the celebration won’t be as large, but it will be significant, he said.

To continue reading on Running Advice and News, click here.

I decided to race last weekend despite having not been training or racing much the last few months. I’ve been taking some time off, but there was an opportunity, I needed a good workout, so I thought I would give it a go. But here’s the thing, I’ve run this race before. I knew the course. I knew what I could run. I knew I could run with the leaders . . . or could I?

Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. I had to keep reminding myself to race my race from where I was this week rather than last year at this time. It’s easy to slip into a mindset of “I’ve done this before” or “I know how to do this.” The question is where is my fitness today? How should I race now rather than then?

The situations that I can see this coming up are two — after dealing with a lay-off from an injury or after taking time off for other reasons. It can be really easy for runners to head back out to a race with visions of their performance based on their last race, but that can only set us up for disappointment. When we start thinking down the “I think I could path” we often get a real dose of reality trying to put it into action. I’ve actually had runners say to me they were disappointed with a race performance as compared to a previous performance years earlier. Our fitness changes, so must our expectations.

The real question to ask yourself at any given point is “what is my fitness now?” Setting goals or expectations based on an idea of past performance won’t translate into actual performance out on the road or the race track. It isn’t as though we can will ourselves to run faster than our fitness will allow. If we could, everyone would be running world records just by setting their minds to it.

To continue reading, click here.

Over the past couple of months I have supported lots of runners at their Spring marathons. I’ve been kind of fascinated by a common theme that I’ve heard from some of them. The most common scenario goes something like this. The runner is telling me that they originally planned to run their marathon in X time but that now that something has happened to them, they’re “just going to relax and see how it goes.” I bumped into a couple of such runners out on marathon courses and they looked great, happy, and relaxed. One such runner said to me, “Once I really realized that I couldn’t make my goal, I felt so much better about the race.”

The common theme here is the tremendous pressure that we place on ourselves as runners. What these runners are expressing is a form of relief that they are feeling after loosening the pressure valve and letting themselves off the hook. As I asked one of the runners above: “hey, we knew that you weren’t going to win this thing, so what’s really changed here?” Nothing’s really changed, except that they’ve allowed themselves to experience the race without the pressure that they were putting on themselves.

Pressure is not necessarily a bad thing. The sense of pressure that we place on ourselves is something that helps us perform. When it comes time to endure pain, push hard, or dig deep, it is that sense of pressure that allows us to respond and meet those challenges. But pressure can be a negative thing as well. If we become obsessed with meeting our goals, especially our stretch goals, then we can drive ourselves crazy with anxiety and worry. This just takes away from the experience and makes us feel bad.

What’s important is that we are in touch with the pressures that we are putting on ourselves and try to understand where they are are coming from. Are these real competitive pressures that we’re feeling (such as from a true adversary or in trying to set a new personal best) or are we simply putting pressure on ourselves to meet a particular goal? I commonly hear runners say things like, “I just really wanted to run 3:35:00 here at this race.” They are heartbroken when they run 3:37:00 or 3:40:00 or 3:45:00 — but have they actually failed to achieve something that anyone other then they would even recognize?

To continue reading, click here.

Polk Audio has released a new series of headphones designed for running and sports called the UltraFit 3000. The headphones are designed to fit snugly in the ears, isolated noise, resist moisture and stay in place while jostling around in active sports. I’ve been testing the new earphones for the last two weeks and I can say that they do perform as advertised with a couple of caveats.

Polk Audio UltraFit 3000 Sport Headphone

First, let’s start with fit. This is an in-ear earphone, which means that you pretty much push them into your ear canals to both stay put and block out noise. The sales person at the Vancouver Marathon race expo showed me this really cool kind of judo chop move in which you put the earphone into your ear and then pull your ear lobe downward, allowing the earphone to move a little further inside your ear. When done correctly, the headphones stay securely in place, even when you’re running, jumping or stretching. Here’s the first caveat however: there are a number of removable ear-plugs designed for different sizes and shapes of ear canals. If you don’t have the right fit, the ear-phones will pop right out (or not go in at all). You really need to make sure that you have the right fit.

Moving on to sound quality, the Polk Audio UltraFit 3000 sounds very good. For such a small ear-phone, you’ll notice a great deal more bass and sound quality than the typical in-ear bud that comes with an iPod. Here’s caveat number two: you may notice that you lose the bass tones if the ear bud moves too far out of your ear canal. I notice that if I’m sitting at my desk (as I am now) I can clench my jaw slightly and then I head the sound more richly. I think this comes back to fit. By moving my jaw a bit I’m probably securing a slightly tighter fit in the ear-phone and that increases the quality of what I’m hearing.

These are billed as “noise-isolating” ear-phones and I can attest to the fact that you’ll hear almost nothing from the outside world when these are ear-phones are in place. Unlike a typical over-ear noise-cancelling earphone, these ear-phones are also acting as ear plugs. When you put them in your ear they are sealing out the noise around you. This means that they really block everything out. Whether this is a good thing is going to be up to you. I typically press the pause button when people walk up and start talking to me. With these ear-phones in place, I have to pull one of them out to talk to people. This was somewhat annoying on several recent flights when flight attendants came up and asked me question. I was furiously giving the international sign for “hang on” which I pull my ear-phones out. I also find it just a bit off-putting to run with these ear-phones on the road, because I hear absolutely nothing of cars, horns, sirens, or anything else. They are, however, great for the gym where the idea is to block out the outside world completely.

To continue reading, click here.

Portland, Ore. – May 20, 2012 – It was an Oregon sweep Sunday as two in-state residents took home titles at the first ever Rock ‘n’ Roll Portland Half Marathon. Ryan Bak of Bend and American marathon star Kara Goucher, who trains locally with the Oregon Track Club, each prevailed in dramatically different fashions.

Kara Goucher Wins 2012 Rock N Roll Portland Half

Beneath a steady Portland mist along the scenic Willamette River adjacent to Tom McCall Waterfront Park, runners from 49 states and 16 countries kicked off Portland’s annual Rose Festival. The lead pack of 6 men, who all owned half-marathon personal bests within one minute, ran an opening mile of 4:57 through the downtown streets, before crossing the Hawthorne Bridge into east Portland.

Bak, Arizona’s Tibor Vegh and Philemon Terer of Kenya separated themselves from the competition at mile six after the steady uphill climb past the swanky business district section located along Hawthorne Blvd. The three runners stayed together until they reached the scenic downtown views on Lloyd Blvd just before mile 12, when Bak made his move to take home the victory with a time of 1 hour, 5 minutes and 5 seconds.

“This was my third weekend in a row racing and it was great to have a decent pack of guys who were all competitive. When the three of us were together until mile 12, I was thinking this is really going be a race,” said Bak, who finished fifth at last weekend’s U.S. 25k Championships and will run Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth on June 16th. “There was a lot happening with little surges here and there, and it was a great feeling to win with the sprint at the end in front of the spectators in my home state. This was my first Rock ‘n’ Roll event and it was a lot of fun and great to have it so close to home.”

With a competitive men’s race, Goucher arrived to the starting line as the most talented runner in the women’s field, using the local race as a fitness test for the upcoming Olympic Marathon in London on Sunday, August 5th. She completed the 13.1-mile event uncontested, crossing the finish line with a time of 1 hour, 13 minutes and 5 seconds.

To continue reading, click here.

ORO VALLEY, Ariz. – Patrick Parish and Gail Kattouf clinched overall national titles in the standard-distance event, while Greg McNeil and Patty Peoples won the sprint-distance race Saturday at USA Triathlon’s 2012 Duathlon National Championship, presented by TriSports.com.

Patty Peoples wins 2012 Sprint Duathlon Championship (Dave Sanders, USAT)

Parish (Bloomington, Minn.) was the top U.S. finisher on the 5-kilometer run, 35-kilometer bike, 5-kilometer run course with a time of 1:23:06. He finished 12 seconds behind overall winner Lionel Sanders of Ontario, Canada, who clocked in at 1:22:54. Matthew Payne (Columbia Heights, Minn.) was third in 1:25:42, and last year’s overall champion Dave Slavinski logged a time of 1:25:50 to finish fourth overall and round out the national championship podium.

“I knew a few people would take it out hard,” said Parish, who ran at Duke University in college. “I just wanted to relax through the first run, and catch everybody on the bike and see if I could close.” Parish also claimed the 25-29 age group title and posted a 49:03 bike split, which was the fastest bike split of the day in the standard-distance event.

Defending champion Kattouf (Greenville, S.C.) bested the women’s field by nearly three minutes, taking the tape with a time of 1:37:00. She led the women’s field after the first run, with a 5k split of 19:02.

“Today I left it all out on the course,” Kattouf said. “I was really pleased with how the race went down. I knew going into transition I had a couple minutes lead, and then I cruised on the run.” In addition to her 2011 national title, Kattouf won a world title and plans to defend later this year in Nancy, France.

To continue reading and for results, click here.

MADRID, SPAIN — The Competitor Group’s Rock N Roll Marathon series has made its debut in Europe. With its first new races in Scotland and Spain, the series of marathons that has brought big marathons to cities around the United States and Canada has landed on the Continent in style.

Preparing to Rock in Madrid

This weekend’s inaugural Rock N Roll Madrid Marathon showed that the popular format that includes rock bands, post-race concerts and smooth race organization can be transplanted to other parts of the world. The most notable impacts to the 35 year old Maraton de Madrid were a large increase in foreign competitors, from about 1,000 last year to 4,000 this year as well as a steep increase in the number of women competitors. Female participation in the event grew from only 8% in 2011 to more than 25% in the re-flagged 2012 event.

Rock N Roll Madrid drew approximately 19,000 participants across the Marathon and 10K distances with about 12,000 in the marathon and 7,000 in the 10K. Athletes from 78 countries took part in the event.

One notable difference between the Spanish event and many American marathons was a strict six hour time-limit for the marathon. Many races in the United States and Canada offer up to eight hours or more to finish, giving them wider appeal among first-timers and walkers. As Scott Dickey, CEO of Competitor Group told an audience on Saturday evening, “this is a race, not a run.”

Tough but Beautiful
The Rock N Roll Madrid Marathon route was routinely called “tough” by competitors afterward. The course sports nearly 20 kilometers of rolling downhill in the middle and a tough uphill section over its last eight kilometers. As one runner told me after the race, he recalled thinking to himself, “oh yeah, this thing goes up at the end,” when he hit the final long series of hills. Another simply told me it was “a real meat grinder.” A number of runners compared the course to the New York City Marathon, known for its tough bridge ascents and descents.

To continue reading, click here.

The 116th running of the Boston Marathon will be held on Monday April 16th, 2012. You can watch the marathon unfold live on television and the Internet. Here is what you need to know to watch the big race unfold as it happens.

Boston Marathon 2012 Television and Internet Broadcast Information
Race date: Monday, April 16th, 2012
Start times (All times US Eastern Time):
– 9:00 a.m. Mobility Impaired Participants Start
– 9:17 a.m. Push-Rim Wheelchair Division Start
– 9:22 a.m. Handcycle Participants Start
– 9:32 a.m. Elite Women’s Start
– 10:00 a.m. Elite Men’s Start & Wave One
– 10:20 a.m Wave Two
– 10:40 a.m. Wave Three

TV Broadcasts:

Local Coverage in the Boston Area
The race will be televised live in its entirety, locally in Boston on WBZ-TV (Channel 4). Please visit www.cbsboston.com, for more information and bonus coverage of the 2011 Boston Marathon.
–8:00-9:00AM Eastern Time — Pre-race Special
–9:00AM-1:30PM Eastern Time — Full Race Coverage

Nationwide Television Coverage
The race will be carried live on the Universal Sports Network. Check your cable listing to see if your cable company offers Universal Sports Network or visit www.iwantuniversalsports.com for more information.
— 9:30AM-12:30PM — Full Race Coverage

Internet Web-cast:
If you do not have access to Universal Sports on your cable network, the race will also be shown nationally on Universal Sports on-line online at www.UniversalSports.com.
–9:30AM-12:30PM Eastern Time — Internet Coverage of Boston Marathon on Universal Sports Network

The B.A.A. website had more than 11 million page views for the 2011 Boston Marathon. The race provides real-time leaderboards and commentary, and avenues by which visitors can track runners in progress. See www.baa.org.

Enjoy the race and check back here for complete post-race coverage on Running Advice and News.

Running-Advice.com
www.running-advice.com